Category: Speeches

Stuart C. McDonald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart C. McDonald on 2016-04-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many take charge requests under each article of the Dublin regulations were (a) received, (b) accepted and (c) rejected by the Government in each month since April 2015.

James Brokenshire

Whilst all asylum claims, including those accepted under Dublin III, are registered on the main immigration database the specifics of each case are not currently available in the form requested as the data is not held in a way that allows it to be reported on automatically.

01/01/2023
Maria Eagle – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Eagle on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what his policy is on the future availability of protected sporting events on free-to-air television; and if he will make a statement.

Mr Edward Vaizey

The Ofcom Code on Listed Events ensures that key sporting events are made available for free-to-air channels. Our sport strategy, Sporting Future: A new strategy for an active nation, published December 2015, made clear that the Government does not propose to review this list.

01/01/2023
Dawn Butler – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dawn Butler on 2016-07-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what support the Government is providing to micro-insurance schemes in developing countries for the protection of livelihoods from the effects of climate change.

Rory Stewart

DFID’s work on climate resilience includes a number of weather-related microinsurance initiatives and a major research programme on scaling up microinsurance in the agricultural sector.

01/01/2023
Jonathan Lord – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Lord on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the effect of noise from Heathrow Airport on people living in the Woking constituency; and if he will make an assessment of the potential effect of an increase in such noise as a result of the construction of a third runway.

Mr John Hayes

The Airports Commission shortlisted three airport expansion schemes, two at Heathrow and one at Gatwick. The Government accepted the Commission’s shortlist in December 2015 and is considering all of the evidence, including on noise, very carefully before reaching a view on its preferred scheme.

01/01/2023
Angela Rayner – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Rayner on 2015-11-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, which passenger rail contracts let by (a) his Department, (b) the Scottish Government, (c) the Welsh Government, (d) Transport for London and (e) Merseyrail are (i) franchises, (ii) concessions, (iii) management contracts and (iv) other types of passenger rail contract.

Claire Perry

Under the terms of the Railways Act 1993 (as amended), all operational contracts for the supply of passenger rail services are franchises.

01/01/2023
Lord Grocott – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Grocott on 2015-12-22.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many life peerages have been created since the 2010 election, and how many of those were (1) Conservative, (2) Liberal Democrat, (3) Labour, and (4) Crossbench, peerages.

Baroness Stowell of Beeston

Peerages created since the 2010 election are listed below:

Conservative: 109

Labour: 55

Liberal Democrat: 51

Crossbench/Independent/other: 30

Of the peers appointed since the 2010 election 22.4 per cent have taken the whip of her majesty’s official opposition. This compares to 15.7 per cent of those created between the 1997 and 2010 general elections.

01/01/2023
Andrew Rosindell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2016-01-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking with his EU counterparts to persuade Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to (a) accept a similar number of Syrian refugees as Jordan and (b) increase their financial support for such refugees.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The UK actively engages with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, on humanitarian and development assistance, and the Gulf States continue to contribute generously to humanitarian support for the Syria crisis. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar are amongst the top ten bilateral aid donors. Contributions from these four Gulf States to UN appeals alone amounts to over $2.5bn. Additionally Kuwait chairs the Top Donor Group and has hosted three pledging conferences. Kuwait is also one of the co-hosts of the London Syria Donors Conference on 4 February. The Gulf States are also contributing through regional charities. For example, the UAE funds the Emirates Jordan camp which houses over 6,000 refugees.

The Gulf States are not signatories to the UN Refugee Convention of 1951, and there is no legal refugee status in these countries. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are living in Gulf States as migrant workers or on visitors’ visas. The EU is also engaging the Gulf States on the resettlement of Syrian refugees.

01/01/2023
Roger Godsiff – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Roger Godsiff on 2016-02-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the findings in the Chief Schools Adjudicator for England’s 2015 Annual Report, published in December 2015, what assessment she has made of the effect of the level of the religious oversubscription criteria used by some schools on parents applying to such schools.

Nick Gibb

The Government will shortly consult on a package of changes to the School Admissions Code. These changes will respond to concerns from parents and to the findings within the Chief Adjudicator’s Annual Reports. These changes will include measures to improve fairness and transparency.

Admission authorities for all state-funded schools, including schools with a religious character, are required to comply with the Code. This includes a requirement that ‘the practices and the criteria used to decide the allocation of school places are fair, clear and objective’.

The Code is clear that parents have a right to object to a school’s admission policy. Where an objection is made and the adjudicator finds that the admission arrangements are unclear, or unfair, or that they otherwise fail to comply with the Code, the admission authority is required by law to change them. The deadline for objections is set many months in advance of the closing date for school applications. This ensures that any admission arrangements which breach the Code can be amended to comply before parents apply for a place.

01/01/2023
Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-03-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to improve defence capacity building.

Michael Fallon

We engage in capacity building activities with a wide range of international partners, covering a broad spectrum of topics including Humanitarian and Disaster Relief; Countering Violent Extremism; Peace Support Operations and countering illicit trafficking.

We committed in the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 to increase our capacity building with partners, and have since then expanded our activity in a number of ways.

For example, we have launched a new three year Counter-IED capacity building programme with Pakistan. We have also joined the US-German Trans-Atlantic Capability Enhancement and Training (TACET) initiative, under which we will deploy Short Term Training Teams to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. In Ukraine, where we have already trained over 2,000 members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, we are aiming to provide additional support to Ukrainian Defence reform including practical interventions in areas such as strategic communication and modernisation of procurement and logistics systems. In Nigeria we continue to expand our resident British Military Advisory and Training Team, and have committed to more than doubling the number of UK military personnel who deploy on short term training tasks to 300 in 2016. We have also significantly increased the support we provide to the Jordanian Army to help them improve border security.

01/01/2023

Kate Hoey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Hoey on 2016-04-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of Disclosure and Barring Service checks took (a) longer than eight weeks, (b) 12 weeks or more and (c) six months or more in each of the last three years; and if she will make a statement.

Karen Bradley

The Disclosure and Barring Service is a non-departmental public body which provides access to appropriate criminal record information for employers through its disclosure service for England and Wales. It also makes independent barring decisions about people who have harmed, or where there is considered to be a risk of harm to, a child or vulnerable person within the workplace. Given the sensitive nature of this work and the reliance on police forces to provide locally held intelligence, it would not be appropriate to introduce competition.

Whilst no assessment has been made of the affect of timeliness on the number of job opportunities which may have been lost, the impact which delays may have on applicants is recognised. The DBS is reliant on police forces completing their checks in a timely manner and is working closely with those forces whose performance does not meet turnaround time targets. In very exceptional cases, where it is apparent that a delay is likely to cause undue hardship to an applicant, the DBS will do all it can to expedite the process by raising an escalation with the relevant police force.

The average end to end time taken to complete a DBS check, including the time taken by police forces, is listed in following table.

Financial Year	Average calendar days for a disclosure to be processed
13/14	11.5
14/15	14.4
15/16	14.5

The proportion of checks which took longer than (a) eight weeks (b) 12 weeks and (c) six months is listed in the following table.

Financial Year	Disclosures which took longer than 8 weeks	Disclosures which took longer than 12 weeks	Disclosures which took longer than 6 Months
% of Disclosures	% of Disclosures	% of Disclosures
13/14	2.6%	0.8%	0.0%
14/15	4.9%	2.1%	0.1%
15/16	5.2%	3.5%	0.3%

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01/01/2023